ABSTRACT
The Bolshevik state was forged through revolution and civil war, and first deployed its sovereign juridical authority amidst chaos and confusion. 'War Communism' is the name by which this period came to be identified as well as celebrated. It continues to be disputed as to what degree the policies of the period were shaped, dictated, by military necessity and as such analogous to the typical policies of wartime governments, and to what extent they were driven by ideology or politics. The emergency state never disappeared; as the originary mode in which state power was exercised and legally authorised, War Communism marked the entire subsequent course of Soviet institutional history profoundly and indelibly. War Communism is typically understood as a moment when law and legality were suspended in the context of an expedient resort to emergency decrees and revolutionary justice. Nationalisation became the signature economic policy of War Communism. It proceeded by default on the basis of outright expropriation, without compensation.
